He and his team at SecureState LLC spend their days trying to slip past their own clients’ security systems to help them find better ways to protect important information from real thieves.

Mr. Stasiak, who is president, CEO and founder of the Bedford Heights company, said he couldn’t have designed a better career himself.

His 28-member team not only does background checks and interviews, but they also climb fences, pick locks and break passwords in an effort to expose physical and virtual weaknesses in the security systems of corporations, government agencies and other organizations.

“The work we perform is exactly what I like to do,” he said.

It’s not a coincidence that his day-to-day routine sounds like something out of a Bruce Willis movie. The 1992 North Royalton High School graduate said that, when he was little, movies made him want to work somewhere in the security field.

He originally considered agencies such as the FBI and the CIA, but he grew to like security auditing when he joined accounting firm Ernst & Young while studying accounting and computer programming at the University of Akron.

“I absolutely fell in love with it,” he said.

After three years, he left Ernst & Young for Arthur Andersen LLP in 2000. He formed SecureState in 2001.

The job is as much fun as it ever was for Mr. Stasiak, who occasionally goes by his hacker nickname, “Static” (other coworkers use names such as “Relic” and “Sasquatch”). There are pinball machines and posters of movies such as “Hackers” and “War Games” in the conference room, and the office has a keg of Hoegaarden beer in the back room.

“It’s more of a creative environment,” said Mr. Stasiak, who goes without a tie. “We’ve got to think a little bit more outside the box. That’s why companies pay us.”

SecureState works with government agencies such as NASA Glenn Research Center and companies such as KeyCorp and National City Corp. with annual sales ranging from $150 million to $30 billion.

When not running SecureState, Mr. Stasiak teaches information technology classes as an adjunct professor at the University of Akron, and he speaks on the topics of ethical hacking and keeping kids safe online. He lives in North Ridgeville with his wife, Cheryl, and their 5-year-old twins, Collin and Corina.

Bob Lautsch, director of information security for Rite Aid Corp. of Harrisburg, Pa., recently hired SecureState under a three-year contract, largely because he was impressed by the work the company did for his previous employer, Charter One Bank.

Mr. Lautsch through work became friends with Mr. Stasiak, whom he described as an upbeat guy with strong technical skills – and one notable character flaw.